No.28

THE RED BOAT WITH BLUE SAILS

Odilon Redon

1840-1916

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THE PEOPLE UPSTAIRS
 Ogden Nash
1902-71

The people upstairs all practise ballet
Their living room is a bowling alley
Their bedroom is full of conducted tours.
Their radio is louder than yours,
They celebrate week-ends all the week.
When they take a shower, your ceilings leak.
They try to get their parties to mix
By supplying their guests with Pogo sticks,
And when their fun at last abates,
They go to the bathroom on roller skates.
I might love the people upstairs more
If only they lived on another floor.

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The local clinic, which in my young day used to house the school doctor and school dentist, lay empty for some time and then was replaced by housing.

I presume that over the years the old building provided a full range of services for all age groups, but for me that was the place in which I had my tonsils removed.

In those days it was thought the tonsils were responsible for a lot of childish illnesses, and many parents were persuaded that having the tonsils out would benefit their young ones.

I don’t remember a great deal about my operation, but I know that, after the job was done, I stayed in the clinic overnight and then was allowed home.

My sister tells me that she was to have it done as well. However, our parents decided against it, after a little girl died having her tonsils out. (And since then, Rita’s tonsils have given her no trouble at all.) 

I was certainly more fortunate than some Glasgow children living in the early 1920s. Those attending the Victoria Infirmary had their tonsillectomies, were sent back to the waiting room to recover, and after a while went home with their mothers by tram. I’ve been told that these tramcars were known as the “Sawdust Cars,” because the floor had to be covered with sawdust to mop up the blood.

There was one good thing about having your tonsils out - you were allowed plenty of ice cream afterwards!

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GRACE JONES

Frederick Sandys

1829-1904

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"Careless, unsocial plant! that loves to dwell 
'Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms: 
Where light-heel'd ghosts and visionary shades, 
Beneath the wan, cold Moon (as Fame reports) 
Embodied, thick, perform their mystic rounds 
No other merriment, dull tree! is thine."
- Robert Blair (commenting on the Yew tree)

This is a part of the churchyard of St.Mary's, Painswick showing some of the famous yew trees. According to the legend, there are 99 yews there and the Devil has decreed that, if ever a 100th was planted, he would destroy it. In the year 2000 one was added to mark the millennium and it has survived.

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Three Poems by Thomas Hardy

THE CLOCK-WINDER

It is dark as a cave,

Or a vault in the nave

When the iron door

Is closed, and the floor

Of the church relaid

With trowel and spade.

But the parish-clerk

Cares not for the dark

As he winds in the tower

At a regular hour

The rheumatic clock,

Whose dilatory knock

You can hear when praying

At the day's decaying,

Or at any lone while

From a pew in the aisle.

Up, up from the ground

Around and around

In the turret stair

He clambers, to where

The wheelwork is,

With its tick, click, whizz,

Reposefully measuring

Each day to its end

That mortal men spend

In sorrowing and pleasuring

Nightly thus does he climb

To the trackway of Time.

Him I followed one night

To this place without light,

And, ere I spoke, heard

Him say, word by word,

At the end of his winding,

The darkness unminding:-

"So I wipe out one more,

My Dear, of the sore

Sad days that still be,

Like a drying Dead Sea,

Between you and me!"

Who she was no man knew:

He had long borne him blind

To all womankind;

And was ever one who

Kept his past out of view.

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ON A MIDSUMMER EVE

I idly cut a parsley stalk,

And blew therein towards the moon;

I had not thought what ghosts would walk

With shivering footsteps to my tune.

I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand

As if to drink, into the brook,

And a faint figure seemed to stand

Above me, with the bygone look.

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,

I thought not what my words might be;

There came into my ear a voice

That turned a tenderer verse for me.

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ON A DISCOVERED CURL OF HAIR

When your soft welcomings were said,

This curl was waving on your head,

And when we walked where breakers dinned

It sported in the sun and wind,

And when I had won your words of grace

It brushed and clung about my face.

Then, to abate the misery

Of absentness, you gave it me.

Where are its fellows now? Ah, they

For brightest brown have donned a gray,

And gone into a caverned ark,

Ever unopened, always dark!

Yet this one curl, untouched of time,

Beams with live brown as in its prime,

So that it seems I even could now

Restore it to the living brow

By bearing down the western road

Till I had reached your old abode.

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My Visit to the Kelpies at Falkirk

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MAIOLICA BASKET OF FRUIT

Fede Galizia 

1578-1630

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The Sayings of Lao-Tsu

Nature does not hurry
Yet everything is accomplished

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FEASTING AND DANCING PEASANTS
Peter Paul Rubens
1577-1640

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UPDATED EVERY WEEKEND

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